SYNOPSIS

A match-by match look at West Bromwich Albion's 2004-2005 Premiership season.

FOREWARD

This is the seventh edition of the Albion Review, and one which a lot of Albion fans have been looking forward to, ever since the last gasp win against Portsmouth. I hope, as well as telling the dramatic story of Albion's survival in the Premiership, this book - the culmination of a year's work by the Baggies' staff - will be kept by the fans as a souvenir of that great day, when everything - in the end - went right.

The important thing for next season, is that the Albion moves forward. In the 1970s Albion fans mocked their Birmingham City counterparts because their players ran a lap of honour on the last day of every season in the top flight, to celebrate stopping up. It is vital that the club aims for more than mere survival. Only a few years ago, Bradford City achieved the same laudable feat, of managing two successive years in the Premiership. Within three years they were bankrupt, and in the Third Division, as Bryan Robson, their manager at the time, will well recall.

Thrilling as the season was, eventually, it should not be forgotten that there was precious little to write home about before Christmas. How many clubs have ever survived a season with just six League wins? The next step has to be stabilisation, keeping the same manager and a core of top players together, difficult though that is, these days.

As the perceived wisdom goes, Albion won the 'mini-League' at the bottom of the table, and survived. Now they have to move up a level, and try to win the next 'mini-League', inhabited by the likes of Charlton Aston Villa and Blues, with the prize not of mere survival, but of European qualification. Albion may not be able to compete with Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United any more, but a top six finish must be their eventual goal. Bryan Robson is the man to make that dream a reality.

I would like thank everybody who contributed to this book, and to The Baggies newspaper in the last year, especially John Homer, Kevin Grice, Dave Holloway, Dave Hewitt and Colin Mackenzie.